The small, plain brick school-house at Little York stands there, we believe, to-day as it did then in all its native and naked ugliness. Such a structure, looking at it aesthetically, is not a cheerful sight to the lover of learning, but at that period it was under the mastership of a mind of no ordinary calibre. From all that we can learn of him, Allen Wight was that remarkable character--a born educator. He did not believe his duty was performed by merely drilling his pupils, parrot-like, to repeat other men's sentiments. He knew that the minds of mortals, particularly if young and fresh, are as diverse in their springs of action as the laws of the universe, and he conceived it to be his duty to study the individual characteristics of each scholar under his charge, as he would have familiarized himself with the notes of a piece of music before he attempted to play it. His method was that of the Jesuit, carried out in a Protestant fashion. In young Glazier he took especial interest. He liked the sturdy little fellow who, though full of youthful vim, could yet sit down and discuss the difference between a Macedonian phalanx as described by Rollin and a _corps d'armee_ as manoeuvred by Soult, and he determined if possible--to use his own phraseology--"to make a man of him." His first step was to lead the boy's mind up to a habit of reasoning upon the present and the past, and upon the every day world of practical realities with which he had to do. When this habit had become sufficiently matured in him, the wise teacher told him the story of his own life, with its struggles, its disappointments and its triumphs, thinking thus to stimulate his favorite pupil to greater efforts and better achievements in the path of knowledge. He talked to young Willard as he would have talked to a man, yet with all the gentleness of manner he would have used in addressing a woman. Every incentive which he could place before the boy, every appeal to both heart and brain which he could make, Allen Wight used--as the mechanic would use the lever--to bring out all that was noblest and best in him--to develop all the sleeping possibilities of his young nature. Ward Glazier had not been as prosperous in his worldly affairs as his patriotism and honesty deserved, and things at the old "Homestead" looked rather gloomy. Poverty is a fearful darkener of child-life, and while its shadow rarely fell on Willard, who was always at school or roving the woods and fields with his uncle Henry, to his sisters and brothers it frequently presented its dark face and whispered unpleasant prophesies of the future.